light of God's own word, but also to point out the mode of correctly interpreting the Scripture, and thus to prevent you from being so easily misled by those who, in labouring to imbue your minds with their opinions, either pervert the truth before they offer it to your acceptance, or so fill you with amiable prepossessions, and so eharm you with beautiful theories, that you never see or arrive at the truth at all.

SERMON V.

PSALM CXXX. 7, 8.

"Let Israel hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy; and with him is plenteous redemption; and he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities."

THE Psalmist exhorts Israel to hope in the Lord on certain grounds, or for certain reasons, which he specifies. The last of these consists in the assurance given, that the redemption which God in his mercy has provided, he will most unquestionably bestow upon Israel. In the illus tration of this particular, we noticed the connexion here stated between privilege and character. The correlative term to redemption is not every sinner or all men, but Israel. He shall redeem, -not mankind at large, but only Israel, every one that is included under that denomination, from all his iniquities. And here we were called upon to notice the heresy of universal pardon,

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which has been lately revived-for though some of our would-be theological guides seem to speak of it as if it were a recent discovery, it is in truth of very ancient origin, and is one of those monstrous things which the human heart, ever fertile in error, did not wait till now, to gender and to propagate,—we were called upon, I say, to notice the heresy of universal pardon which has been lately revived, and modified by its composition with other heresies as bad as itself. And, in the course of what we took occasion to say upon it, we showed you, first, that forgiveness, as used in Scripture, does not mean, according to the modern universalists, a mere sense or feeling of forgiveness, but the actual remission of sins, or deliverance from obligation to punishment on account of sin; and, secondly, we showed you that forgiveness, or the remission of sins is, according to scriptural statement, connected with the possession of certain qualities of character, and so connected as clearly and necessarily to exclude from the benefit all to whom these qualities do not belong. The passages to this effect that are to be found in the Bible are numerous, unequivo cal, and explicit. Some of them we produced and applied to the subject,-showing you, as we went along, how fatal they are to the tenet of universal pardon.

We followed up our references to these Scrip

tures by challenging the assertors of universal pardon to produce a single passage of the Bible, which affirms their proposition. When we made this challenge, we did not mean to say that they can produce nothing from that volume which they so interpret as to answer their purpose, or which may not in its insulated state, and to a superficial eye, have the appearance of favouring their views. For there never was, since the Christian record existed, an opinion, however extravagant or impious, for which its abettors did not appeal to Holy Writ. We are quite aware that our opponents have their texts ready on demand; that they have a considerable number of them; that they can expatiate and dogmatise upon these most fluently; and that could they but shut out all the rest of revelation from our view, and prevent us from exercising the powers of common understanding, they might be wonderfully successful in puzzling and confuting us: and in all this, they do but practise the very tactics which Socinians and unbelievers have always practised in their warfare against the truth and the doctrines of the gospel. We do not intend to blink the scriptural authorities with which they have attempted to back their heresy. On the contrary, so far as they are known to us, we shall occupy ourselves by and bye in pointing out their total insufficien cy to prove an iota of what they are so confident

ly advanced to support. In the meantime, we aver, that there is not one of them; nor is there a single syllable in the volume of inspiration, declaring that every sinner, or that every individual of the human race, is an actual partaker of the pardoning virtue of Christ's death. This we shall illustrate at some length when we discuss the scriptural proofs, as they are called, which have been adduced on the other side. But we cannot help submitting it even now to your consideration, as of paramount and vital moment.

We bring many, many passages from the word of God which do not seem to imply, and which do not leave us to infer, but which declare expressly, and in so many words, that forgiveness of sins is bestowed on those only who are distinguished by certain specified characters, and that all who are destitute of these characters are denied that boon. But we repeat it, there is not a sentence, nor a clause of a sentence, in any part of the divine record, which asserts, that every sinner is really and already pardoned in consequence of Christ's death, or in consequence of any arrangement or dispensation whatsoever. If there were, you must see at once that there would be no escaping the conclusion, that, on this infinitely important point, the Bible contradicts itself, and is thus deprived of its most essential claims to our belief. But there is no such inconsistency in the sacred